Tony Duff uses bodhisatva and suggests Tibetans have spelled it that way for hundreds of years. Is the Tibetan spelling of Sanskrit wrong or just a national method, like British English vs American spellings?

A bodhisattva does not become weary of evil beings nor does he commit the error of bringing forth thoughts inclined to reject them and cast them aside. Avatamsaka Sutra, ch. 25

I happen to have in front of me "From Turfan to Ajanta : festschrift for Dieter Schlingloff on the occasion of his eightieth birthday" which contains the paper "How to justify the spelling of the Buddhist hybrid Sanskrit term Bodhisatva?" by Gouriswar Bhattacharya. Apparently it was spelled 'bodhisatva' in many Buddhist texts and inscriptions, but in many modern editions of texts and studies this has been "corrected" or whatever.

Through Dzogchen we can really understand what God is and we don’t have to worry if there is a God or not. God always exists as our real nature, the base, for everybody. - Chögyal Namkhai Norbu

dzogchungpa wrote:I happen to have in front of me "From Turfan to Ajanta : festschrift for Dieter Schlingloff on the occasion of his eightieth birthday" which contains the paper "How to justify the spelling of the Buddhist hybrid Sanskrit term Bodhisatva?" by Gouriswar Bhattacharya. Apparently it was spelled 'bodhisatva' in many Buddhist texts and inscriptions, but in many modern editions of texts and studies this has been "corrected" or whatever.

It was spelled bodhisatva in old Sanskrit texts?

A bodhisattva does not become weary of evil beings nor does he commit the error of bringing forth thoughts inclined to reject them and cast them aside. Avatamsaka Sutra, ch. 25

dzogchungpa wrote:Yes. The article is not so clear, but yes that seems to be the gist.

Wonder if the Sanskrit commentators made clear that Bodhi Warrior is what is meant by bodhisatva? That sure puts more life and color into bodhi being; suggesting a Warrior for Bodhi for others and a Warrior to become such. I like it.

A bodhisattva does not become weary of evil beings nor does he commit the error of bringing forth thoughts inclined to reject them and cast them aside. Avatamsaka Sutra, ch. 25

dzogchungpa wrote:Yes. The article is not so clear, but yes that seems to be the gist.

Wonder if the Sanskrit commentators made clear that Bodhi Warrior is what is meant by bodhisatva? That sure puts more life and color into bodhi being; suggesting a Warrior for Bodhi for others and a Warrior to become such. I like it.

The article doesn't seem to mention that.

Here's a passage from Dayal's "The Bodhisattva Doctrine in Buddhist Sanskrit Literature":

Now bodhisatta in the Pāli texts seems to mean "a bodhi-being ". But satta here does not denote a mere ordinary creature. It is almost certainly related to the Vedic word satvan, which means "Krieger", "a strong or valiant man, hero, warrior." In this way, we can also understand the final dpaḥ in the Tibetan equivalent. Satta in Pāli bodhisatta should be interpreted as "heroic being, spiritual warrior ".

(dpaḥ is an old transliteration for the word that is now usually transliterated dpa'. Bodhisat(t)va is translated as byang chub sems dpa' in Tibetan, with byang chub sems corresponding to bodhi and dpa' corresponding to sat(t)va. The meaning of dpa' is similar to that of satvan given above.)

Here's Duff's glossary entry on "Satva and sattva":

Satva and sattva: According to the Tibetan tradition established at the time of the great translation work done at Samye under the watch of Padmasambhava not to mention the one hundred and sixty three of the greatest Buddhist scholars of Sanskrit-speaking India, there is a difference of meaning between the Sanskrit terms "satva" and "sattva", with satva meaning "an heroic kind of being" and "sattva" meaning simply "a being". According to the Tibetan tradition established under the advice of the Indian scholars mentioned above, satva is correct for the words Vajrasatva and bodhisatva, whereas sattva is correct for the words samayasattva, samadhisattva, and jnanasattva, and is also used alone to refer to any or all of these three satvas.

All Tibetan texts produced since the time of the great translations conform to this system and all Tibetan experts agree that this is correct, but Western translators of Tibetan texts have for last few hundreds of years claimed that they know better and have "satva" to "sattva" in every case, causing confusion amongst Westerners confronted by the correct spellings. Recently, publications by Western Sanskrit scholars have been appearing in which these great experts finally admit that they were wrong and that the Tibetan system is and always has been correct!

Gotta love Tony's style.

Last edited by dzogchungpa on Fri Sep 27, 2013 1:14 am, edited 1 time in total.

Through Dzogchen we can really understand what God is and we don’t have to worry if there is a God or not. God always exists as our real nature, the base, for everybody. - Chögyal Namkhai Norbu

His books often have glossaries. I used the one from "Gampopa Teaches Essence Mahamudra", I think. The definitions seem to be more or less the same in all of his books, many of which seem to be available online if one knows where to look

Through Dzogchen we can really understand what God is and we don’t have to worry if there is a God or not. God always exists as our real nature, the base, for everybody. - Chögyal Namkhai Norbu

dzogchungpa wrote:The Tibetans transliterate Sanskrit, much as we do using the Latin alphabet, using their alphabet and some special characters and diacritic type markings.

Obviously. Which means that there's no debate whether there should be one or two Ts, the debate is over the usage of Tibetan orthography.

Actually, the debate is completely about whether the word should be spelled bodhisattva or bodhisatva, it has nothing to do with orthography. There is no "Sanskrit script," so it can just as accurately be written in Tibetan, the latin alphabet, devanagiri, and so forth.

dzogchungpa wrote:Here's a passage from Dayal's "The Bodhisattva Doctrine in Buddhist Sanskrit Literature":

Now bodhisatta in the Pāli texts seems to mean "a bodhi-being ". But satta here does not denote a mere ordinary creature. It is almost certainly related to the Vedic word satvan, which means "Krieger", "a strong or valiant man, hero, warrior." In this way, we can also understand the final dpaḥ in the Tibetan equivalent. Satta in Pāli bodhisatta should be interpreted as "heroic being, spiritual warrior ".

There is another possibility as well. 'Satta' can have several meanings in Pali. It can mean 'seven', but that is of course not relevant here. It can mean 'a (living) being', 'sattva' in Sanskrit, and that is the usual interpretation of 'Bodhisatta' > 'Bodhisattva': 'awakening-being'. It can, however, also mean 'able to, intent on', 'shakta' in Sanskrit. If that is the original meaning intended in Bodhisatta, then the title would mean '(a person) intent on (or able to reach) awakening'. And that would in fact be a very good and apt description of Gotama before he became a Buddha. Therefore it has been suggested that those who transferred the texts from Middle Indian dialects (Pali and other Prakrits) into Sanskrit, made an error, and that the correct translation of 'Bodhisatta' ought to be 'Bodhishakta', instead of 'Bodhisattva'. This is of course an unproven theory. It makes some sense, however, but I suppose we'll never know for sure.

dzogchungpa wrote:(dpaḥ is an old transliteration for the word that is now usually transliterated dpa'. Bodhisat(t)va is translated as byang chub sems dpa' in Tibetan, with byang chub sems corresponding to bodhi and dpa' corresponding to sat(t)va. The meaning of dpa' is similar to that of satvan given above.)

Actually, I made a mistake here, it is byang chub that corresponds to bodhi and sems dpa' which corresponds to sat(t)va.Sems basically means mind. Anyway, the point is the same.

Through Dzogchen we can really understand what God is and we don’t have to worry if there is a God or not. God always exists as our real nature, the base, for everybody. - Chögyal Namkhai Norbu

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